A transition day most of it spent in the car. Before leaving Stanley we went for a walk to the commercial end of town where there is quite a substantial fishing fleet, fish processing plant, huge cool store etc. This is not the picturesque part of town.
From Stanley drove back through a smoke laden atmosphere to Wynyard where we stocked up on groceries for the next few days. Carried on to Somerset where we fuelled up the car. Here they still have forecourt attendants! Very nice ladies in smart uniforms who fill your car, wash the windscreen, take your money and bring you back the change. You don’t even have to get out of the car, the whole transaction done out the carwindow. Just like the olden days. Here in Tasmania that’s the present days.
From Somerset turned inland to go to Cradle Mountain. This was a nice quiet road winding through farmland then bush then plantation forest. It would make a great cycling route with plenty of undulations but no big hills. In fact the trip from Launceston to Stanley and on to Smithton would be a good cycling trip. You can by-pass the main road using the old highway, coastal route and secondary roads. Plenty of small towns along the way.
We were following the A10 and stopped at a rest area in Hellyer Gorge. This is a beautiful rainforest and we did a 15min walk to a sparkling river. While eating our lunch a car pulled up beside ours and 4 hippie looking young people got out. We had seen them before in Stanley camped next to a “No camping sign”. One of the girls in a billowing skirt and purple bikini top lazily gyrated with a hula hoop to the sound of Billie Holiday singing Strange Fruit. Very alternate.
On the other side of us was one of those cheap camping vans, with a quote from Madonna on the side: “Sometimes you have to be a bitch, just to get things done”. Three guys on bikes in leathers and thigh high boots arrived, all snorting and hissing and dust -the bikes, not the guys, who were very friendly. Even in a little rest area in the middle of nowhere life is interesting if you just wait and watch.
Carried on along the A10 until it intersected with the C132. Kevin and Owen will remember Brett waiting for us here with hot drinks. They will also remember the top of “Cradle Mountain Development Road Highest Point 930m”. This time we walked up the 200m to the lookout over the Vale of Belvoir. Arrived at Cradle Mountain mid afternoon and checked into the Discovery Holiday Park. We are in a family cabin which is just a room with a double bed and a set of bunks. Communal kitchens and bathrooms. Quite different from the last few nights.
The Holiday Park is located just outside the national park and across the road from the visitors ‘ centre. It is large with cottages, cabins, bunkhouses, powered and unpowered sites, all in a forest setting. While cooking our canned chunky beef with beans and frozen cubed vegetables, in a pot with no handle, we got talking with a couple from Melbourne. Neville was 74 and Helen about the same. They were pretty spry and had been to NZ and walked all the main tracks. Anyway it turned out he had walked the last 100km of the Camino de Santiago last year, so we had much to talk about.
Somehow our talking mentioned the ease of getting around Europe on buses and trains. A Belgian woman with short pink hair who had until then been engrossed in her iPhone suddenly burst into our conversation. Complaining about there being only one bus per day to Launceston and it was early in the morning which was not suitable. She didn’t get any sympathy from Neville who explained Tas was a large island with a widely dispersed population of only half a million. The Belgian humph went back to her iPhone, probably scowling over bus timetables.
Nb in the kitchen there is only one pot with a handle and there is a sort of competition as to who gets in first to claim it.